WOW!! ( this word is exactly how I feel about today's clinic session!)

My goal for clinic today was to get through an OD and scale one quad. I had a patient today who I had never met before. I first of all had to start out by doing a new health history form, which took quite awhile because my patient had so many different medications she was on, and my patient was telling me her whole life story. I began my extra and intra exam everything went well. Then my patient informed me that her main goal for this app. was to get x-rays, which is great because I already had us scheduled in the X-ray room. As we waited for our turn, I started to probe, when all of the sudden my pt flings forward and said she felt nauseous, and explained to me she had never felt like that before, so I let her sit there for a minute, then she said she felt better and that we could continue. Then she informs me that she needs to leave by three, which shortens a half hour of my time ( dang it). So at that moment I realized we weren't going to get to scaling a quad. So then we took x-rays and I had to retake one, then I had just a few minutes left to get an OD check before the patient had to leave.
I feel like a could of accomplished a lot more in this clinic session if my patient would of been a little more cooperative. My patient was really nice, but she really liked to talk a lot. I pretty much heard her life story ( and as a student I don't have time to hear all about life, I don't want to be mean, but that is just how it is)! Then I felt like I had valuable time taken off, when she felt sick (which she found out it was the patient glasses we make them wear that made her sick ;) ). When she had to leave earlier too, it was kind of frustrating. I just felt like a lot of valuable time was wasted.
For my next experience, I don't really think I would change anything, I think everything went smoothly on my end, except the one retake. I just felt there was a lot of wasted time with the patient talking.

Ultrasonic Scaling!

Today was our first day in back in clinic after the holiday break. Today our goal was to learn how to use our ultrasonic scaler and our Gracy's! First Sam showed us how to set up our ultrasonics and showed us the right amount of water that we would to have come out. You want a drip with mist! Then she let us all set up our units. Then she showed us on our typodonts how to use the ultrasonic in the mouth. She made it look very easy. Then it was finally my turn to try. I admit going into it I was pretty nervous because I thought it was going to be hard. Then as I started doing it I realized it was super fun! I am nervous now to do it on a real patient now though, because I have only done it on the typodont. Then we learned how to use our Gracey's instruments. We have a 1/2, 13/14, 15/16. I had no clue how to use these until today. I learned that 1/2 goes with the anteriors, 13/14 for the distal and 15/16 go for the mesial. I just need to remember that now. I had a difficult time with the 13/14, but I think I started to get the hang of it.

The thing that made me feel best about today was, Pro. Costley telling us that one of the goals for this semester was to learn how to feel calculus, which made me feel great because I don't think I have felt it up to this point, and I want to know how it feels! It made me feel great that everyone else felt the same way as well!